


The Perfection

by Niko_Niko_Neek



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula Redemption Arc, Drabble, Family, Mentions of Mental Illness, Other, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26888968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niko_Niko_Neek/pseuds/Niko_Niko_Neek
Summary: She meets her father’s eyes from the crowd and musters an icy nod of approval.She will be perfect.She will never be Zuko.She, one day, will be the Fire Lord.------------A short exploration of Azula's life.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	The Perfection

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you asking for an update on my other avatar fic and are probably fuming rn, I am sorry :)

Azula is three.

She isn’t talking yet. Her mother finds the intent way that she stares to be somewhat unsettling, but her father insists that this is a mark of high intelligence. To him, it means she is taking her time to ensure her speech is perfect before she performs it. All the time, she watches.

She watches and she learns.

She began walking early, but still needs a bit of help to get from one place to another. Zuko holds her hand and walks back and forth with her from one end of the room to the other.

She learns, very quickly, that he will catch her if she falls.

Azula is five.

Her mother has been crying all day, and has only just now stopped. She is still in bed, with the gossamer curtains drawn over the opening in the wall, where the sounds of the day outside drift in. Ursa shrinks, as though to hide from them.

Zuko tells her not to go in, that their mother isn’t feeling well. But, she toddles over anyway. If she reaches her hands up and stares, her mother will certainly pick her up.

She does so, keeping one small palm on the edge of the bed for balance. Ursa looks at her, eyes dim and far away. She rolls over, her back facing the child.

Azula is six.

She is already better than her peers in the advanced firebending academy. At her father’s insistence, she has skipped into the higher age groups, alongside her brother.

Already, she is better than him.

It is something Ursa reprimands her for flaunting, which she fails to understand. It isn’t meant as an act of violence, her being the best. It’s just something that happens.

This is the year Zuko stops wanting to play with her.

It is also the year that her mother leaves.

Azula is nine.

She hides down the hall, watching her father lecture Zuko. Her brother has his head hung low in shame, the same way the peasantry bows to them when they take their outings. Her fathers anger is not explosive, and never has been-it is tempered and precise, like a sharp paring knife. Word by word, he teaches at Zuko’s pride until there is nothing left but a little boy, stripped of any airs that might become the crown prince, sniffling.

Azula decides she will never be Zuko.

Azula is ten.

The crowd is silent, and the only sound that filters out is her brother screaming.

The scent of charring flesh is thick in the air, almost sweet like pork. It turns her stomach and, for a moment, she wonders if she will be sick. Though she has not yet even reached teenhood, she understands the severity of this punishment-the disfigurment, the banishment, Ozai is renouncing Zuko. He is marring his face so that the family resemblance will never be there again.

For a moment, she wonders about her brother. She wonders about playing with him as a child on the beach, that he always saved the seashells she collected in a big glass jar even when her mother claimed there were too many. She remembers being picked up and carried by him when her feet got tired after their training. 

But only for a moment.

Her expression steels. Zuko is ushered away by a few sympathetic healers, but both her and Ozai are lacking that sympathy.

She meets her father’s eyes from the crowd and musters an icy nod of approval.

She will be perfect.

She will never be Zuko.

She, one day, will be the Fire Lord.

Azula is thirteen.

Her feet bleed onto the smooth stone of the training room. She has been on them for ten hours with no breaks. Dizziness sweeps through her like an illness, threatening her form. A single nail, on her right forefinger, is chipped.

“Amazing work, Princess Azula.” She can hear the reluctant note in her private instructors voice. “I think that should conclude our lesson for today.”

“I will decide when it’s finished.” Her tone is biting, authoritative. 

The chipped nail remains in her focused vision, a staunch mark of failure.

This time.

This time, it will be perfect.

Azula is fourteen.

Seeing her brother for the first time since his banishment, it strikes her how much weight he has lost, how gaunt his face has become. He has grown taller with age, but the harsh life of banishment has aged him further than his years. He looks at her with hatred.

She feels no real regret about this. He is the failure, and she is a success. It is only natural that he be jealous.

And to think, for the past few minutes, he truly believed their father would ever want him back.

Azula is fourteen.

She has amassed a force all on her own. In the chamber of the Earth Kingdom, she takes a seat against the curved and polished gold of the throne, settling in as naturally as though she had been sitting there all her life. 

This is the difference. This is the thing which has set her apart from the rest of the world.

Power is something she was always meant to have.

At her left is Ty Lee, eyes gleaming with pride in her accomplishments. To her left, even the constantly neutral Mei cannot hide her satisfied smirk.

This, Azula tells herself, is what it is to be happy. To be the final piece on the board.

Azula is fourteen.

This time, she has recovered some ancient thing which never seemed like an option to her. The option of a brother.

Zuko has taken to royal life again without much grace, but it seems fitting to have him remain there. In welcoming him back to the fold, Azula knows she has sacrificed her right to the crown, but considers the allyship she has formed to be worth it. Though he lacks her mastery, Zuko is a powerful bender. He is strong in a way she sometimes admires.

Only sometimes.

They sit together on the porch of their abandoned family home. Zuko is quiet, irritable, sad mostly, and this frustrates her. There is no reason to lie about moping over things that have already happened.

This was supposed to be a vacation. It was supposed to be fun.

Still, he walks with her back down to the ocean. A seashell crushes under her bare heel.

Azula is fourteen.

She is lying on her side, cheek pressed against the cement ground. Above her, Ty Lee and Mai stare down, remorseless. Traitorous.

This was her greatest mistake.

She understands, now, why her father has no friends. Why her mother left. Why Zuko left.

A leader, a true leader, must stand alone. A true leader must never trust anyone. In the past months, she has let her guard down.

This could not be a spontaneous action. This was the result of months of planning, Azula is sure. Perhaps the entire time in Ba Sing Se, these two had been whispering, conversing just as her worthless brother had done. 

She is alone.

She tells herself sternly that this is better this way.

Azula is fourteen.

She stops sleeping. It is too great a form of vulnerability for her to chance. When she is crowned Fire Lord, there is no ceremony, no honor, no dedication. Ozai mentions her promotion as a throwaway comment.

A comment made right before he leaves. As Ursa had done. As Zuko, in his turn, had done.

Azula is fourteen.

They are all trying to kill her. She can hear them, whispering outside of her door, just through the walls. 

It does not matter. She will get them first.

Her mother’s voice rings in her ears.

Azula is fourteen. Fourteen and dying.

Her wrists are chained behind her back. Her brother’s lifeless form remains on the other side of the pavilion. He is gone now. She has eliminated him, and all she feels about it is pain.

Azula is fourteen.

She has nothing left.

Azula is fifteen.

Zuko, for reasons she cannot understand, visits her every day at dinnertime. It is through his own decree that she was given a bed, food from the royal kitchens instead of the normal prison fare. She even hears rumors that he was the one who installed the torches outside of her cell, at a safe distance, because he wondered if the darkness was giving her nightmares.

She hates him. She hates him. She hates him.

Azula is sixteen.

There is a pale colored drink she is forced to ingest at mealtimes. The healers say it is experimental, that she should report with accuracy everything she feels.

She feels nothing whatsoever.

But, gradually, things begin to change. The nightmares slow. The whispering from her father-whom, until now, she believed was in the same cell-stops. 

Zuko still visits her. Most of the time, they do not speak, he just sits and looks at her through the jail cell like he is observing some feral thing. After about three weeks on the drink, they begin to talk.

His leadership as Fire Lord is, predictable, soft and pathetic. He is trying to rebuild the nation, to change the deep seated politics. There are people trying to kill him. None of this surprises her very much.

She informs him that she ought to punish treason with banishment.

Azula is seventeen.

She has been moved from a prison to a hospital. Many confinements still apply, but there are some other people, and she can even walk outside with supervision. She spends a lot of time in the garden.

Mei and Ty Lee have tried to visit her. Each time, she refuses to see them.

She still allows Zuko in. Mostly because she knows he’s too weak to try anything.

A girl is moved in to the room next door to hers-a young girl, about eight. From what Azula overhears, she is suffering from lack of sleep, mania...Symptoms similar to her own. She can hear the girl’s parents arguing outside.

About her Firebending lessons. Not about her state. About her lessons. About how soon she will be able to attend them. How much of a setback this will be. How far behind it will leave her in her education.

Something very deep inside her chest hurts with a pain difficult to ignore.

The girl is eight.

It isn’t fair.

Azula is eighteen.

Because she has improved, and because she has signed an official document of agreement not to set the city on fire or to leave the nation, she is allowed out of the hospital and into her own house. There are still guards posted outside, and it is considerably smaller than the palace, but after years of controlled meals and limited scenery, she accepts the conditions. Zuko pardons her openly, during an official address.

She has no idea why.

Mei leaves a present, some new clothes. She tells Azula how glad she is to see her doing well.

Azula almost believes her.

At nineteen, it all comes out.

She isn’t sure why she begins crying when Zuko comes over for tea-maybe because it’s her birthday, or because their father passed to illness a few weeks ago, or maybe because it’s winter, or because it’s raining. 

But she cries. She cries and cries and cries.

In a hurried manner, she demands that Zuko not be angry with her.

Her brother’s response takes a moment to come, but when it does, it is careful and soft.

He was never angry with her, he says.

He was only sad, because he thought she had lost her way.

They sit together, drinking Jasmine brew in silence.

Azula is twenty-two.

Aside from Zuko and his wife, she is the first to hold their baby daughter. Stunned, she takes her small newborn niece in her arms, peers down into her red and wrinkled face. The baby is already sleeping, exhausted from the whole ordeal just as her mother is.

She is so small. Azula herself must have been this small once.

Perfect. The word comes to mind, for the first time in nearly eight years.

Her niece is perfect.


End file.
